Regeneron's COVID-19 antibodies breach a new frontier by cutting deaths in some hospitalized patients

Antibody treatments have shown little success in helping COVID-19 patients with severe disease. But a large study of hospitalized patients reveals that Regeneron’s antibody cocktail can reduce the chance of death in patients who haven't produced their own antibody responses to the disease. The 9,785-patient study, conducted in the U.K., showed that among those who produced no natural antibody response, REGEN-COV reduced the risk of death by 20%. The data could open up a new group of patients for the antibody cocktail, giving some new oomph to sales that have recently surged. For patients who had developed antibodies, the treatment didn't work at all, suggesting that antibody testing would be useful for all hospitalized COVID-19 patients, trial investigator and Oxford professor Martin Landray told reporters in a conference call on Tuesday.